


Happily Ever Afters Fail

by phoebesmum



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Family, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-26
Updated: 2009-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Motherhood, for Natalie, brings new responsibilities, and some hard choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happily Ever Afters Fail

**Author's Note:**

> Written January 2007 for the annual Pic for 1,000 challenge.

Love. Love changes everything. So they say.

Nobody said it must be for the better. Love is a dirty bomb, destroying, polluting; ripping through flesh, shattering souls. Wreaking havoc, wrecking lives.

Natalie and Jeremy were married on the last day of August, 2001, in a civil ceremony that satisfied neither set of parents. They left for a honeymoon in Vermont and, two weeks later, came back to a world changed forever.

Survival, then, was all that mattered. In October, Natalie discovered she was pregnant. She sat down at her kitchen table, drew up an old bentwood chair, pulled a sheet of graph paper toward her, and plotted out a schedule for her future in neat, precise tables: income/expenditure, time available/tasks to be accomplished. Unknowingly, she adopted the classic Madonna pose, feet planted apart, left hand cradling the slight swell of her belly, as she chewed the stub of her pencil, brows knotted in a frown.

_We can't do it_, she thought. _It's too soon. A year or two down the road, maybe, but not now. It's impossible._ But, somehow, they'd have to find a way. There was no turning back. Not for her.

Two days before Christmas, Dana collapsed at the noon rundown. To everyone's surprise, it was Kim she asked to drive her to the hospital. When Kim returned, unaccustomedly muted, to tell her colleagues that Dana had miscarried, they understood.

Nobody knew how to react. Dana had confided in no-one; she hadn't even been seeing anybody, so far as anyone knew. Some accusing eyes turned to Casey, who flinched, but denied everything. Only Dan really believed him, and Dan had his reasons.

She returned to work a week later; people tiptoed around her, afraid to reopen the wound, breach a floodgate. But Dana was surprisingly philosophical about it, calmer than they'd ever seen her. She'd adjusted, she said: "These things happen." She threw herself into her work, fighting for her creative child as savagely as ever she would have done for her lost baby.

Tact had never come easily to Natalie, but she tried; serene and happy in her own easy pregnancy, she carefully suppressed her natural urge to make it the centre of her universe, kept it out of the workplace, until Dana took her aside.

"This is ridiculous, Natalie. I don't hate you. I don't resent you. Women are giving birth all the time, all over the world, I can't hunt all of them down and kill them!"

Natalie managed a small smile. "I thought it might be …"

"It isn't," Dana said, firmly.

Nathanael Hurley Goodwin came into the world on June 4, 2002, an even 7lb, ten fingers, ten toes, healthy, red-faced and squalling. Natalie went home two days later, and in under a month had lost every extra pound she'd gained. Nathanael, caught between two religions, eluded the _bris_ but was nonetheless squeezed, at his maternal grandmother's insistence, into a frilly white gown and baptised. Smiling, Dana agreed to be a godmother.

"You're sure?" Natalie asked anxiously, and Dana rolled her eyes.

"I'm sure. Natalie, it's _fine!_" She closed her fingers around Natalie's forearm. "You don't have to treat me like I was made of glass, Natalie. I won't break. I'm okay with this."

And she was. She started a trust fund for Nathanael, bought him a silver rattle, and held him in her arms, only a little too tightly.

Kim took over as senior producer while Natalie was on maternity leave, settling into Natalie's chair with a proprietary air that implied it might be hard to get her out of it again. But, Dana reminded her, it was just for a few months. Natalie would be coming back. Everything would revert to how it had been.

Except, it turned out, not so much. A week before she was due back, Natalie came into the office, Nathanael in a sling across her shoulder, and handed in her notice.

"I can't do it," she said. Her eyes were too bright, and her face was flushed, but her voice stayed calm. "I've done the math, over and over. I just can't raise a kid on what I earn here. I can't afford a nanny, and I can't afford to stay home." She lifted her head, met Dana's eyes. "_SNL_ called. They've got another opening. It's twice what I earn here, and – "

"And. _What?_"

Natalie jolted. She'd known Dana would be angry; she'd been prepared for it. But the question might have come from a stranger, a cold, bitter stranger.

"Dana, you know I love _Sports Night_ – I care about all of you. But things change – "

Dana's fist crashed against the desk. The baby woke, and began to grizzle.

"Don't tell me things change!" Dana sounded more human, now, at least, but beyond angry: incandescent. "I _know_ things change, Natalie, look outside the window! We're all living with change, all the time, we're all dealing with it, and the way we deal with it is that we stick _together_, Natalie, we don't turn our backs on our friends and go running the moment things get a little tough." She caught her breath. "_Sports Night_'s given you everything – _I've_ given you everything, I trusted you, I depended on you and now, now that you've got what you want, you're just going to – "

And Natalie's voice rose, scaling high over the other woman's, the words she'd been suppressing for months: "It isn't _my_ fault that your baby died, Dana!"

In their office, Casey and Dan heard the shout. Dan looked up sharply, then away; sat very still. "I can't …" he said, softly. "I don't know how to fix this."

"Leave it," Casey said, his voice gentle, calming. "There's nothing you can do."

"I can't _stand_ it!" Dan said, suddenly, violently, and his knuckles were white. Casey stood, and crossed to him.

"I know," he said, and reached down. Their fingers entwined; their own love a ticking timebomb that would one day destroy them all.

***


End file.
